Russia’s Justice Ministry labeled an non-governmental organization a “foreign agent” for working to preserve the legacy of human rights abuses under communist Soviet Union rule.
The Memorial organization has catalogued nearly 2.6 million victims of Soviet oppression, and recently created a database listing 40,000 Soviet officers who participated in atrocities. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” in a speech in 2005.
Memorial began its documentation before the fall of the Soviet Union, even organizing a petition to create a memorial at the official Communist Party Congress in 1989. The organization boldly placed a memorial stone at KGB headquarters in 1990, and led the drive for official recognition of atrocities by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Putin heralded the Foreign Agent Act in 2012, after widespread protests over the legitimacy of Russia’s elections in 2012. Amendments added to the Foreign Agents Act in 2014 allow the Justice Ministry to forcibly label any nongovernmental organization at will. Once labeled, the ministry can target NGO leaders with heavy fines, and jail time.
Russia’s Justice Ministry labeled the only independent polling agency a “foreign agent” in early September, after its polls showed a dip in support for Putin’s ruling party ‘United Russia.”
Russia’s targeting of the Memorial and the Levada Center come just two years after its prosecution of another election monitoring group, GOLOS. The NGO advocated for greater transparency in Russian elections, which the Justice Ministry decided was “political activity” akin to spying.
The NGO was nebulously labeled a foreign agent after receiving some foreign prize money it did not solicit. The justice ministry insisted the group met the criterion for foreign funding, despite the organization’s immediate return of the prize money. After GOLOS was labeled a “foreign agent” it was levied with a massive fine, its leader was personally fined, and it was shutdown by the Justice Ministry for six months.
“In a country where not a soul was held to account for millions of senseless, state-sponsored killings, acts of torture, and other crimes, preserving history and historical memory is paramount. Now the government wants to equate that exercise with perfidy,” Human Rights Watch derided the decision Wednesday.
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